Vision:
“Seamless” is the overwhelming descriptor of the new email system–both in its implementation and its easy accessibility from work and from the web. Even the strong password conversion was met with understanding and acceptance, in a few cases, enthusiasm. The evening and weekend times for the switchover made for minimal downtime for all of the ZCOB.
FAQ:
I heard that my password is going to change. Is this true? and if so, why?, when?, how?, what?
Yes, it’s true.
It is a safe guard against intruders, including viruses from outside of our network. It will also bring us closer to meeting Visa compliance.
This will go into place the end of May and the beginning of June depending on your business.
When you login to the PC after the upgrade has taken place, you will be prompted for a new password.
There are some minimal requirements for the password: It must be at least 8 characters long and should include 2 of the 3 characters:
1) An uppercase
2) a symbol
3) a number
For example, you can convert the password “chicken” into a strong password: “ch1ckeN!” –It’s now 8 characters long and uses all 3 of the character requirements (remember you only need 2 of the 3 of the character requirements).
Will there be any network outages?
There will. It is difficult to estimate how long the upgrade at each location will take. Roughly, we’re looking at it taking one evening per location: Roadhouse is one, Bakehouse/Creamery another, Deli/ATS/Zhaus another, and Mail order another.
How will email be different?
It will be faster, and more reliable. While Outlook from the work PCs will look and act the same, Web mail will be dramatically improved, and will have all of the collaboration features of the outlook clients. Mac users will also see a dramatic improvement with all of the collaboration features enabled in Entourage.
What about training?
The IT staff will available for one-on-one instruction and onsite demonstrations.
Timeline:
-FAQ created May 15
-Microcosm during the week of May 15th. Each member of the IT department will give a brief overview of the project, ask who else needs to know and how should we tell them during each onsite and during the Spring Huddle.
-Spring Huddle Announcement on May 16
-Workin article due May 19
-ZCOB-DC built by May 19
-Deli-DC, MO-DC, RH-DC, BH-DC, Zh-GC built by May 26
-First AD migration on May 29th - RH
-Second AD migration on May 31st - BH / CR
-Third AD migration on June 3rd - Deli / ATS / Zhaus
-Fourth AD migration on June 6th - MO
-Exchange server rebuilt by June 19th.
-OWA configured and running on June 20th.
-Migrate select mailboxes on June 21st.
-Migrate all users on Saturday, June 24th.
This weekend Evolution was released for Windows. Evolution is a popular email client in the Linux world, something I looked at when we rolled out the new Exchange server last year. Evolution accesses OWA to connect to the Exchange server, but has the look and feel of full-on email client. This is great for Windows users looking for an alternative to webmail when working at home. LifeHacker also notes:
Did you know that if you delete a a mail message in Outlook, it’s not necessarily gone from the system? The message is simply moved to your “Deleted Items” folder. Over time, your “Deleted Items” folder can become very large, and take up precious space on the mail server.
Appointments in Entourage between March 11th - 31st are off by 1 hour. A fix is apparently still in the works. Here’s an explanation by Entourage guru, Paul Berkowitz:
